Photodiodes Advance Quantum Communications

by Mark Itzler fibers.org News, 29 Mar 2006 The advent of public network encryption has revolutionized secure information exchange. This modern method, based on algorithms, involves one party providing a public key that allows any other party to encrypt a message, but decryption can only be performed with a separate, private key held by the first party. This scheme does have a weakness, though, because it relies on computational complexity. Although breaking the key is exceedingly difficult today, this data encryption approach could be compromised in the foreseeable future through advances in computational power and the mathematics associated with code breaking. Princeton Lightwave has commercialized a single-photon avalanche photodiode that is targeting quantum cryptography applications, and it could provide uncrackable communications. Read more